This Chanukah, we need solidarity not unity

While the story of Chanukah is often taught to young children as a classic “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat,” the history is far more complex.

Chanukah started as a civil war between Jews: aristocratic urban Hellenistic Jews who benefited from collaborating with their Seleucid overlords and rural radical anti-Hellenizers like the famous Maccabees.

Long before the Seleucid army intervened, there were plenty of Jews who were more than happy to adopt Greek culture, even to the point of undergoing painful and primitive foreskin reconstruction.

But those foreskins didn’t save them when Antiochus invaded Jerusalem to put down a rumoured “uprising”.

The historian Max Dimont’s describes Antiochus’ blundering intervention: “He marched his armies out of Egypt into Jerusalem, where he senselessly slaughtered 10,000 inhabitants without inquiring into their party affiliations.”

The glib modernism of “party affiliations” only enhances the farce of the whole debacle. Dimont paints a portrait of an egomaniac so blinkered by his insecure, wounded pride that he thoughtlessly massacres thousands of his own supporters in a scramble to maintain dominance.

When arsonists set the Adass Israel synagogue ablaze they too did not inquire into the community’s political affiliations. Had they done so, they would have learned that their attack, described by the federal police as “political”, targeted Melbourne’s least political Jews.

The rest of the Jewish community - both in Melbourne and worldwide - is far from apolitical. Jews have always been a politically active bloc, and since October 7, the global debates over Israel and Palestine have echoed louder and more vehemently within the Jewish communities than ever before.

Now, however, there is a call for unity. Antisemitism has a chilling effect on intracommunal debate. We are told we must not criticise each other, or that if we do, we must keep it behind closed doors - lest our enemies use our internal criticisms and disputes against us.

This is an understandable fear. Throughout Jewish history, internal strife among Jews has been exploited by antisemites. A Jewish civil war over Hellenization became an excuse for Antiochus to invade Jerusalem and desecrate the Temple. Generations later, a corrupt succession dispute and civil war among the Hasmoneans led to the Romans being invited to adjudicate. The Talmud is filled with cautionary tales about informers going to the Roman authorities with malicious reports of strife among Jews, with disastrous consequences ranging from manhunts to the destruction of Jerusalem itself.

This dynamic was further complicated by the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). For the first time in Jewish history, Jews professed allegiance to civil legal and political authority, and not just to their fellow Jews. To some, this made them traitors and informers who endangered the safety of the Jewish people. But to modern Jews this was part of living a responsible, ethical Jewish life.

Such conflicts persist in the present day, even in our own communities. In the wake of the synagogue attack, Netanyahu and others drew a direct link between Australian government support for Palestinian sovereignty and the attack. This claim is questionable, but the complex interaction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism cannot be ignored. Some say we must separate them, others that we cannot. The question of how we as Jews can publicly criticise Israel or other Jews without giving our enemies ammunition feels especially pertinent.

Keeping our mouths shut and presenting a united front is tempting. It is understandable to insist that “this is no time to make distinctions”. We are all at risk. But it is also part of a victim complex and a trauma response. It absolves antisemites of responsibility for their behaviour by blaming it on Jews airing dirty laundry.

The ancient Jewish temptation to blame Jewish tragedy on Jews lives on in claims by anti-Zionists that October 7 was the inevitable consequence of decades of Israeli occupation. It lives on in claims by Zionists that antisemitic violence is inevitable in the Diaspora, and that only in Israel or through Israel can Jews ever be safe, and that Australian support for Palestinian sovereignty is the harbinger of antisemitic violence. And it lives on in the fear that if the broader public becomes aware of political conflict among Jews, they will use that as an excuse to intervene violently in our affairs - just as Antiochus did in the days of the Hasmoneans.

To give in to those fears is to buy into victim-blaming. Instead, we must acknowledge the difference between unity and solidarity.

We are not, and have never been, a united people. There have always been different voices, different movements, different kinds of Jews. In fact, we are commanded to voice our criticism of one another: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely rebuke your kin and incur no guilt on their account.” (Leviticus 19:17)

On the other hand, we cannot let our internal conflicts tear us apart and "escalate into deeply destructive feuds” . The injunction to criticise when necessary is followed directly by the commandment “You shall not take revenge, and you shall not bear a grudge against a member of your people; you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)

Together, these verses convey a vital and nuanced message. We can and should often find ourselves on opposite sides of political and ideological lines. Sometimes this is respectful debate, and sometimes it is the delicate and unenviable work of holding other Jews accountable for actions or statements that disgrace us all.

But however deep our divisions, we must stand in solidarity with other Jews, recognising the crucial ways in which we have common interests and face common threats. At the end of the day, as the rabbis reminded us, all Israel is responsible for one another (Shavuot 39a).

The historical Maccabees, with their propensity for infighting, never learned that lesson. But the rabbis, it seemed, did. When the festival of Chanukah appears in the rabbinic era, it is not celebrated as a military victory but principally commemorates the rededication of the Temple after its desecration.

This year, as Adass Israel rebuilds their synagogue after its desecration, Chanukah gains a special poignancy for Australian Jews.

Consecration in Judaism relies upon distinctions. A sanctuary, a scroll, a jug of oil must be set apart to make it holy. This Chanukah, may we rededicate ourselves to the sanctity of our differences in the face of those who would reduce us to mundane uniformity.